Newsgroups: alt.society.anarchy
From: tp0x+@cs.cmu.edu (Thomas Price)
Subject: The January Statement
Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1993 23:30:51 GMT
The January Statement
1.1 There are two fundamentally existent classes of entities: individual
lives (a class with many members), and the totality of all things (a class
with one member).
The individual life is defined in terms of the first-handedness of experience.
The boundaries of the individual life correspond to the sensory limitations of
the knowing subject, and as a consequence are the only natural boundaries that
exist to define an entity (other than the trivial case of the boundary
separating That-Which-Is from That-Which-Is-Not). All other boundaries -- for
example, the boundary separating the class of entities known as "Boomerangs"
from that class known as "Sticks", are arbitrary.
N.B.: the individual life is not to be confused with the individual
personality, which is an intensional object.
1.1.1 Life is only what you know first-hand. All else is information.
For example: the validity of physics is, in nearly all cases, only an
agreement. This is not a statement about the epistemological
status of physical science: this is a statement about the human beings
who claim to accept the validity of physics. For the overwhelming majority
of "educated" people, "physics" is something they know about only at second
hand. They are not familiar with the theories of physics, nor with the
experiments upon which those theories are based. They depend upon others
and upon the comforting promise implicit in reference materials for their
confidence in the validity of physics.
Only that which you could reproduce from memory, were you to be set down
alone upon a desert island (with whatever resources you might need --
paper and pencils and laboratory equipment, in the case of our example)
is truly yours. Everything else is only held by you at second hand and
is only in the nature of an agreement with others so far as its validity goes.
1.1.2 Intensional Objects are the veil of Maya.
An intensional object is
something that is unconnected to any direct sensory experience that one
has. For instance: the gold in Fort Knox is an intensional object. People
act as if it exists and behave in certain ways because of it, but have never
seen it. Its existence is only known to them at second hand. Intensional
objects do not exist in your world. They exist in your language.
A famous place one has never been to (Kenya, perhaps) is an
intensional object. What if you and your friends were to read James
Hilton's _Lost Horizon_ and not realize that it was fictional? You would
think of Shangri-La in exactly the same way that you now think of Kenya.
If you have never been to Kenya, Kenya is no different from Shangri-La.
In fact, you cannot go to Kenya. You cannot go to a country. You cannot go
to a city. A country is an intensional object, as is a city. The size of
the place you can go to is limited by the range of your sight and hearing
and smelling and touching and tasting. You can't go to Kenya, nor can
you go to Vancouver: you can only go to fields, neighborhoods, buildings,
streets, squares.
Perhaps you can see the whole city all at once from some vantage point, just
as you might be able to see all of Kenya from space. In that case you would
be experiencing the whole, and you might call certain regions of your
visual field "Vancouver" or "Kenya" but this appearance is not what is
usually meant by "Vancouver" or "Kenya."
An organization is an intensional object. It is a conceptual frame put
around the interactions of individuals. Individuals who conceive of themselves
as "belonging" to the organization place their direct experiences of office
and co-workers into the conceptual frame of "the organization." Furthermore,
this frame constrains their behaviors towards one another. One can think
of the conceptual frame of an organization as an agreed-upon framework for
interaction.
The "veil of Maya" is a teaching metaphor found in Hinduism and Mahayana
Buddhism: Maya is the goddess of the illusion of this world, whose illusory
nature must be perceived in order for enlightenment to occur.
1.1.3 The only people that exist in any person's world are the people that
person knows face-to-face. All else is information.
Eric Clapton is an intensional object. There is a sufficient amount of
information available about him that it is possible to feel that you
have gotten to know him. You might talk about Eric Clapton as if you
were talking about a real person. You would not be. You would be talking
about magazine articles and sound recordings and perhaps some ideas about
life or feelings about the way a life ought to be lived. You would be
talking about information.
Eric Clapton is not your friend. Eric Clapton doesn't care if you live
or die. Eric Clapton doesn't exist. You've got some nice records. That's
it.
1.1.4 Nothing has any meaning except as part of someone's life.
"Meaning" is a property of the experiences of a subject. It is not an
independently existent object.
This idea is not so much opposed by other ideas, but merely forgotten.
I bring the assertion to your attention, then. How can things be otherwise?
If a tree falls in the forest, and there is no-one there to hear it -- who
cares? That is how the cliche should be stated.
One might say: but what if one comes upon the fallen tree later? One never
comes upon anything later. One can come upon things only in the present,
fallen trees included.
2.1 Art is necessary.
We are awake and we don't understand why or how but it is
fun to play with the fact.
2.2 Art is less important than Life: Art's function is a theraputic one.
Daily Life is more important than art. Daily Life is more important than
anything; it's a miracle. Daily Life is the only thing that exists, just
as the Present is the only time that exists.
When visiting an art gallery one should not feel that one is there in
order to see more beautiful things than exist in his daily life, one
should feel that he is there in order to be reminded what it is to see
things as beautiful -- and should consciously take that renewed sight
out of the building with himself and into his ordinary routine.
Summary
1.1 There are two fundamentally existent classes of entities: individual
lives (a class with many members), and the totality of all things (a class
with one member).
1.1.1 Life is only what you know first-hand. All else is information.
1.1.2 Intensional Objects are the veil of Maya.
1.1.3 The only people that exist in any person's world are the people that
person knows face-to-face. All else is information.
1.1.4 Nothing has any meaning except as part of someone's life.
2.1 Art is necessary.
2.2 Life is more important than art: art is theraputic.